


A Fast Explosion

by waldorph



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Angst, Blanket Permission, Gen, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's about a mile west of town.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fast Explosion

She's out shooting rabbits when she finds him. Mostly sport, some to keep in shape, some just 'cause the buggers ate her vegetables. She looks him over, feels for a pulse (not likely to be alive, looking like that, but you never know). Turns around and gets her two girls, Anne with the two shovels and Liz with a bucket of water.

He's about a mile west of town, and only recently dead: still warm, and not from the sun, either.

"Where's he from?" Annie asks, grunting as she digs the grave—shck-thwop, shck-thwop, shck-thwop goes the shovel, a little deeper each time.

He wears strange clothes—smoother than any loom could make, 'cept maybe some of the fancier ones back out east. Not here, though. All in black, except, of course, where he's been pulverized. Looks like ground meat: looks like someone was going to make sausage out of him. No one 'round here with that kind of rage: killing like this is personal.

"Dunno," Helen says. She gestures to Kate, and she picks up her shovel and they work in tandem; goes a lot faster. Six feet so down he can't rise again (so nothin' can dig him up), six foot long (that'll be a tight fit) and three across. Say a prayer over the body, pile rocks on top.

Likely take all day.

Helen crouches down, takes off her apron and dips it in the pail of water, cleaning off his face. Cloth turns pink, then red, then scarlet. That's a whole lot of blood.

She pulls open one of his eyes, and blinks: ain't never seen eyes so blue; ain't never even heard of 'em. He's got full lips and it was a beautiful face, she thinks—when it was alive.

No identification nowhere on him, no coin, and no dirt on his boots or hems of his trousers, which is fair strange.

Takes only one of them to roll him into the grave, but they share the burden, and cover him up.

Another lost soul in the wilderness, lost to it. Sad thing: he couldn't've been thirty.

They head back to the house: dinner to be made and animals to be cared for, and they lost a lot of good work hours out there.

A month or so later, strangers walk into town. They're looking for someone: a man, they say.

Nope. Haven't seen him. Don't want any trouble. Keep on walking. Word gets back to her when she's at Hickory's—gun's been jamming, damn thing.

"I'll be a minute," she tells Hickory, who waves her off. "Hey," she calls, squinting at them. "'Bout six foot, blue eyes, pretty."

There are four of them: gruff one with a frown and the hands of a doctor, a kid with curly hair, an Eastern-lookin' one, and a fair strange serious man whose ears kinda…point. Like he's a fairy out of one of her girls' fairytale books she used to read when they were kids. Eyebrows that look like he got caught in a blast. They all turn to look at her.

"Yes," Pointy-ears says. She nods.

"Go about a mile due west of here. There's a grave— bout a month old, but the rocks should still be there. Can't miss it."

There's a flash of something: anger, blame. She snorts. "He was dead when I found him, boys. Now go on, you're wastin' daylight."

They come back in, and three of them keep on walkin'—everyone's watching with a hand to their guns, wary of these folk, but no one's gonna start anything with men grieving.

The strange one looks at her, like even though he's been lookin' for clear some time he expected this to end happily.

"This is life, honey," she says, feeling a twinge of pity, followed by a wave of impatience: life is hard, out here. Suck it up: he oughta know better'n this. "Ain't no happy endings here."

"I appreciate your cooperation," he says, over-enunciating. Educated, fancy. Poor kid.

They don't come back, and when she goes back out to see if they secreted away the body she just finds a stone with one word: _Kirk_.


End file.
